by Brian Hodge
“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we pull an all-nighter tonight?”
He paused in mid-drink. Eyed her a second over the bottle. An all-nighter? He wondered if oysters perked up the female libido the way they were supposed to perk up the male.
“Sure,” he said. Ever cautious. You don’t want to pursue one meaning when the lady’s intent is altogether different.
“I was thinking we could hit some blues clubs until they all dose down, then go to my place and fix some kind of picnic breakfast, and then go to the Davis Island beach to watch the sunrise. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
He nodded. That it did. A lot better than vegetating on the couch, watching endless videos unspooling while waiting to catch a couple hours of fitful sleep before morning. Oysters or not, he was happy to take her up on it.
A few minutes later, Justin took a trip to the rest rooms, designated, rather than MEN and WOMEN, as SPEARFISH and CLAMS. A public phone hung on the wall between the two doors, and he fed it a quarter. Dialed Erik’s number. Suffered through the twenty seconds of outgoing message before leaving his own.
“Hi sweetie, it’s your freeloading roommate. Don’t wait up for me. Sorry to disappoint, but I got a better offer. April’s going to show me some more of the area’s natural wonders, and it looks like it’ll take all night. See you in the morning.”
He hung up, turned away smiling as a couple of obvious newcomers to Pearl’s suspiciously eyed the cryptic rest-room doors. He thought of the sunrise, of sitting on a beach and sharing it with April.
The dawn of a new day that he was actually looking forward to. A day whose light showed that life was really worth living again.
Erik was two blocks from home when Justin left his message, speaking to an empty apartment. Dusk was quickly cloaking Davis Island when he wheeled his car into the lot. Uh-oh, looked like somebody had car trouble. Nice big Olds, sitting there with its hood at half-mast.
You had to laugh. He drove a lowly little Lynx, and it had never given him a single breakdown.
Erik parked near the back of the lot, along a border of pines and the building’s pair of dumpsters. He got out, carrying videocassettes freshly rented from his main outlet, Mind’s Eye Video. More entertainment for Jus — and himself if he managed to stay awake for the entire duration. Three titles, about as broad a range as there was to choose from. John Boorman’s Hope and Glory, Academy Award quality. For laughs then, a Monty Python epic. And for the bargain-basement sleaze they so dearly loved, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. A well-rounded lineup.
He felt good. Useful. Justin’s reintegration with the world was showing definite promise. It had looked touch and go awhile, those first couple of days. Very iffy. Okay now, though. And to have made a difference in the guy’s life left a warm glow within. Maybe Justin had been right — he wasn’t dead inside after all.
“Excuse me? Do you know much about cars?”
Erik was passing behind the stranded Olds on his way to the front entrance when he heard the voice. Looked in its direction. Some girl was leaning out from behind the wheel. Had he looked away in the first place, he’d have had to do a double take. Her image, the car — they didn’t fit together. She looked part punk, part metal, the rest vague gypsy longings for something she probably didn’t even know yet herself. He’d seen the latter plenty of times.
“I know how to call a tow truck,” he said.
“Could you take a look? Please?”
So naïve, so innocent in a way. How could he refuse? Erik moved alongside the car, stepped before the hood. Looked into the engine compartment. He set the three tapes on the fender. An errant breeze caught his membership card from Mind’s Eye, flipped it behind him and at the base of the building’s wall. He almost went for it, figured it would be safe for the moment.
Erik planted fists against hips, tried to look competent. Wished he had a tractor cap to spin around, bill to the back of his head. All the great mechanics did that. Right away he dismissed with the obvious. No ripped-out fistfuls of wires, no conspicuously missing parts. Like the engine. So much for visual inspection.
“Looks okay to me.” This was embarrassing. Why was anyone with testicles automatically assumed a mechanical genius?
“What about these red lights on the dash?” she called out. “Do they mean anything?”
Erik rolled his eyes. He’d thought such helplessness in young women was supposed to be a thing of antiquity. A red warning light marked TEMP or OIL was pretty self-explanatory.
He crossed around to the driver’s door to lean in and give the dashboard a peek. She stepped out to give him room. She was a skinny little thing, smiling shyly at him, all blond hair and black clothing. He leaned forward from the waist, poked his head inside.
And the dashboard looked as unlit as a Christmas tree in June.
Erik frowned. Something did not feel kosher. Felt very, very wrong, in fact.
He started to pull out when he saw a dim shadow fall past his shoulder onto the driver’s seat. Legs like tree trunks.
And then something dark and sleek arced in to slam behind his ear, and its eruption within his skull was loud and brilliant white. He felt, at the farthest reaches of painful awareness, large hands shoving him back inside the car. As he sprawled across the seat, other hands were reaching over the back, rising from the floorboard to pull him farther in, and doors were opening closing engines starting and his head raw thunder while white went black.
When Erik awoke, it was with a headache the size of the national debt. Mostly radiating out from behind his right ear. It seemed to sync with music pounding from elsewhere in the room. He’d seen enough movies to realize he had probably been popped with a sap, hard rubber on the outside, lead on the inside. Had he been able to get his hands up that high, no doubt there would be a lump the size of a grade-A small egg beneath his fingers.
But his hands had a very limited range. A tight rope circled his waist a few coils, and to it, each wrist was tied independently of the other. He had just enough freedom to flex his fingers and scratch the upper sides of each thigh. His ankles were lashed together as well.
He blinked, let his eyes get used to the light. He was in someone’s home. Light pastel walls, with furniture that was angular and modern and soulless. He was on one of those shiny, leathery sofas that shuddered beneath you like enormous wind breakages if you weren’t careful when you moved. Glossy black, in this case. Canted into one corner, Erik straightened, shook his head to clear the sludge.
The blond girl, his siren, was watching him from the other end. She didn’t seem quite so innocent now, and perched atop her head was a World War II Nazi SS officer’s black hat. She watched him with clinical fascination.
Onward, try to make sense of things.
The music, loud and painfully aggressive. Guns N’ Roses, he realized, blasting from a large stereo housed on a glossy black fiberglass shelf network. Against a nearby wall, the big guy who had probably sapped him was upside down, doing push-ups off his head. Up and down, steady as a piston. This was all very strange, like waking up in a Fellini movie. At this angle, the guy’s face was hard to distinguish. Erik peered closer. Oh, hell — Lupo, associate and manservant and whatever else of Tony Mendoza.
His host.
“Hey. Sleepyhead! Let’s talk.” Tony’s voice was irritatingly cheerful. He rose from a chair in the far corner, strolled across the living room.
Erik grimaced, tried to focus. Blurry Tony.
“You like music? I do. Couldn’t live happy without it. Gotta listen to it loud sometimes, too.” Tony plucked a remote-control unit from the glass coffee table. Aimed across the room at the stereo. The volume swelled, and with it came more pain. Every bass thud, every slashing guitar riff were more spikes in his brain.
“You like that? Listen to that clarity! No distortion at all!” Tony was clearly proud of his toys, jammed his fist to the beat. “Man, you just can’t beat compact discs!”
Erik shut his eyes against the soni
c assault. His groan went unheard outside his own head. Fellini had quickly given way to Brian De Palma at his most perverse. Every beat underscored that this was no nightmare from which he would soon gratefully awaken.
At last Tony remoted the volume back down to tolerable, so he didn’t have to shout to be heard. He carefully set the unit back on the table. Pulled a folding director’s chair closer and sat atop it, looking down at Erik. The superiority in height was without doubt intentional.
“Neighbors don’t hear a thing when it’s that loud either.” He smiled, inspected his fingernails. “Soundproofing in the walls. Comes in handy. I like my music loud. Noisy sex too. Sasha, show him how loud you screamed last night.”
The girl at the opposite end of the couch performed as if on cue. She moaned a couple of times, gearing up, then let loose a shrill scream. Could’ve been passion, could’ve been pain. From the looks of her, one might just as eagerly be the other.
Tony laughed. Blew her a kiss, then looked back at Erik. “You know what all that means?”
Slowly, Erik nodded. He could scream his lungs out, and no one beyond these walls would ever get wise. A very distressing point to have demonstrated.
“Sure,” Tony said. “I knew you were smart.”
Over at the wall, Lupo finished out his set of pushups, rolled down to his knees, then stood. Didn’t pay Erik so much as a single glance as he moved to Tony’s former chair and settled. He picked up a book and began to read. Erik squinted, unaccountably curious to see the title. A moment’s distraction from the waking nightmare. Couldn’t believe it. Guy was reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.
“Now, since you’re obviously so smart,” Tony continued, “I know you’re going to want to cooperate with me. Right?”
“We’ll see,” said Erik.
“No no no no no. This is not an option, understand. This is mandatory. You’re a college graduate, so you know what I mean when I say this is a required course.”
Erik said nothing. Unable to see much cooperation inspired by this beginning.
“I need to know where to find your friend from St. Louis. Justin.”
Erik shut his eyes a moment, let the despair sink in. All at once, having told Jus to let go of Tuesday night’s scene at the Apocalips seemed the most foolhardy of advice. It was the only connection between them all. Dead dancers, dead Trent. Next? He felt his chances for ever seeing things beyond these walls again plummet, like mercury in a thermometer during a cold snap.
“So. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Tony shook his head, frowning. “That’s not good enough. That’s not even the truth. Again: Where is he?”
“He got his own apartment, I forget where.”
Tony sighed and left the director’s chair. Stood before Erik and swatted him a good backhand across the face. Sasha wet her lips, and Lupo didn’t even look up from the book. Erik tasted a thread of blood stringing from his lip.
“Don’t make me repeat the question.”
Erik glared up at him. Shook his head.
Two more backhands. When he tried to tuck his head down toward his chest, seeking what little protection that might provide, Tony boxed an ear. Every rise in pulse, in blood pressure, was that much more throbbing agony in the knot from the sap.
“Man, don’t be a fucking idiot,” said Tony. “We can do this as long as it takes. I’m self-employed, I set my own hours.”
“Yeah?” Erik said. “I’m on vacation. I’m one up on you.”
From behind his book, Lupo chuckled. Nice to know he was at least tuning in.
And so it went for a while, Tony hammering down with open fists and backhands. Erik weaving his head one way, then another, seeking shelter that was not to be found. Then, as it wore on, trying to reel in self-awareness to the point that he might no longer sense the pain, self-prescribed autism, until Tony was simply pounding on unfeeling meat. It was only marginally successful.
Finally Tony let up and stepped back, breathing hard. Erik raised his head, swallowed blood. His face felt like tenderized steak. Life’s regrets began to creep up, and he wondered if that meant they were going to take him out and kill him soon. He wished he’d watched fewer movies, spent more time with friends. Wished he’d visited his Ohio-bound parents more often. Wished he’d proposed marriage to a girl last year instead of breaking it off when things got to looking too serious.
Wished he’d hugged Justin before the guy had left with April this evening. For that matter, wished he’d hugged April too. That little moment, laughing by the door, all three of them. Nice couple, those two made. He’d been a tad jealous. Who’d have guessed it was goodbye.
Forever.
“Change your mind?” Tony asked.
Erik peered up, sweat dampening his hair, beading his face. “Go fuck yourself.”
Tony breathed a weary sigh. “Lupo, this just isn’t working.” It came out a childish whine.
The Feminine Mystique was tabled, and Lupo crossed the room in long strides. Frowned down at Erik. Lupo had a very no-nonsense look about him when he wanted. Picture the boxer Roberto Duran on steroids.
“Time for Operation Aquaman,” said Tony.
“Oh, definitely,” Lupo agreed.
“Sasha, you maybe wanna make yourself scarce awhile.”
She rose up in indignation at her end of the sofa, the Nazi hat’s brim tipped low over her eyes. Thing was too big for her. “I’m in on this too, don’t worry about me.”
“Suit yourself.”
Lupo reached down and seized Erik by the rope around his waist and pulled. “Arise and hop, my son.”
Erik had no choice but to follow, bunny-hopping as Tony led them down a short hallway and opened a door to a windowless room. Dark within, but alive with the sounds of gently bubbling water and the hum of motors. Oddly soothing, given the turmoil he felt on the rise.
Tony flipped a wall switch, and nearly two dozen fluorescent lights flickered to life, housed in aquarium hoods. Erik looked around the room and ceased his feeble struggles. Outside of well-stocked pet shops, he’d never seen this many aquariums in one room in his life. The room was full of them. Fresh water, tropical salt water.
He found it an oddly austere room, like a shrine. Pastelblue walls, white tile floor, ceiling of squares of white acoustic tile. Leather recliner in the center. And the aquariums, all lit up.
Except for one on the far side. A big one, the biggest of all. He wanted to cry. Refused to let himself, just let the urge burn at the back of his throat.
“You like this room?” Tony asked. “This place is my pride and joy, man. When I’m in here, the outside world just does. Not. Exist.”
Erik felt close to hyperventilation. Would not cry, not cry. Lazy gray shapes swam in the large tank across the room. He figured they would hold him aloft and repeatedly dunk his head, pull it out just as he was on the verge of losing his air. A time-honored interrogation method, since at least the days of witchfinder generals. He tried to calm his breathing, conserve precious air.
Lupo pulled him across the room, held him before the tank by a fistful of collar. Tony stood proudly beside the tank. Behind them, Sasha plopped into the recliner, a child at the movies.
Lupo withdrew a straight razor, opened it. Held it before Erik’s face with a gentle grin. It looked very shiny, very sharp. He snugged it against the side of Erik’s throat.
“Don’t move,” he whispered into Erik’s ear, and Erik needed every ounce of control not to shake uncontrollably as Tony untied his left arm.
“You know, you can stop this any time,” Tony said.
“You already know my answer.”
Tony chuckled. “You’re not sounding so tough anymore. Got that little wiggle in your voice.”
It seemed oddly poetic, disastrously so, that he would be paying for Justin’s new lease on life with his own. The final bill, coming due. He wouldn’t betray Jus, couldn’t, no matter what they did to him.
He’
d always known that he and Justin would wind up living in the same place. Had entertained this future dream that, once the nightlife and sowing their wild oats had lost its appeal, the two of them would settle down into pleasant, hopelessly conventional suburbia. Wives, monogamy, homes, mortgages, the whole bit. And each other, friends through the decades. Drinking beer in a backyard while watching their collective brood of children playing with one another. Growing old and gray together, hopefully not bald.
So, Justin, man, looks like you’ll have to find somebody else for that scene. But before you do, I hope you figure out what’s happened here … and put these fuckers in the ground.
Tony wrestled his one free arm into cockeyed rigidity, held it over the tank. Lupo reached out with the straight razor and flicked a pair of quick cuts before Erik even realized what was happening. One on the heel of his thumb, another midway up on his inner forearm. Cold slices, already weeping red by the time the pain set in.
Erik watched the lines of blood fill, then trickle down his hand, his arm. Watched the drops plink to the water. Saw a blur of silvery-gray, heard a splash as something briefly broke water. This wasn’t going as he’d thought, and somehow that seemed worse.
Tony clicked on the lights over this last giant aquarium.
And Erik couldn’t help but scream when he got his first real look at just what lived there. Pride be damned. He wept. There was no shame.
“Last chance,” Tony said. “Then it’s fish food.”
Erik spat into Tony’s face and received a brutal backhand for it. He desperately remembered telling Justin about his reasons for quitting the Tribune, enumerating the atrocities he had seen the aftermath of. Including the corpse whose arm had been chewed by piranhas. Never dreaming the killer had been under his nose all along.
He wrestled, he struggled, but they had him out-powered. The temptation was there, the clutching at straws. Give them what they wanted. But it would do no good. He could spew out Justin’s name, employment history, and Social Security number, and it wouldn’t change a thing.
‘Cause I’m fucked no matter what.